My name is TWAGIRA ANASTASIE I was born in 1963 and I have resided in KAMABUYE for many years.A long time ago they used to tell me all what happened in 1959 how the TUTSIS were being tortured simply because they were Tutsi.
So I started witnessing that in primary two when social segregation continued between Tutsis and Hutus until 1990 when the Tutsis who had fled the country wanted to come back to Rwanda. The government then under the leadership of Habyarimana denied them. It is from there that Rwandans who where abroad decided to invade the country through fighting because they had denied them their rights. Almost immediately they begun to kill the Tutsis who were inside the country and some then fled the country. Then genocide started against the Tutsis by the Hutus.
But Hutu leaders complained that cockroaches had invaded the country saying that the Tutsis have come to take back the country and were even to bring the back kingship.We were no longer interested in this, but they kept on teaching the citizens that the TUTSIS are snakes and they are very bad people and they don’t want peace at all.
But according to me, that is not the way I was seeing it because we used to share with the Tutsis. In 1991 when leaders encouraging injustices against the Tutsis, I avoided that. Instead I told the Tutsis who were my neighbors to try and hide from such injustices and told them that Interahamwe were coming to kill them and urged that they seek a refuge in the church.
In 1994 it was not easy at all to hide even a single person but I tried to help a man whose name is Ntaganda Yohana (John) I directed him the way through the forest to Burundi I even met another woman whose name Meresiyana and I did not know her at all because she had come from Gitarama to visit her brother and his name was Augustine Nzeyimana. Unfortunately they had killed him. I escorted her up to Burundi but what makes me happy is that she returned back to Rwanda after the 1994 genocide she is alive and now has a family. I helped the Tutsis more in 1990-1994 by showing them a way to Burundi.
UNITY AND RECONCILIATION:
There’s unity and reconciliation because Rwandans are staying in good harmony unless few people who needs to be taken to counseling schools and learn to know how they should understand how to stay in harmony with others.
I n addition to that we do share whatever we have for example many people gave me two cows and we are in good harmony with those who survived the Genocide and those who participated in the 1994 genocide against Tutsis.
INKIKO GACACA:
Gacaca courts are very good and have brought justice to Rwandans in order to be cured of their hatred (those who need to recover from the disease, announces it in public) you have to break the silence that is why those who killed have to ask for forgiveness and the survivors to forgive them. Most are done with no injustices and many cases have been solved.